Kut-le answered slowly.

“I guess I can realize it.  But the end is so great, so much worth while that nothing before that matters much, to me!  Rhoda, isn’t this good—­the lift of the horse under your knees—­the air rushing past your face—­the weave and twist of the trail—­don’t they speak to you and doesn’t your heart answer?”

“Yes,” answered Rhoda simply.

The young Indian rode still closer.  Dawn was lifting now, and with a gasp Rhoda saw what she had been too agonized to heed on the terrace in the moonlight.  Kut-le was clothed again!  He wore the khaki suit, the high-laced riding boots of the ranch days; and he wore them with the grace, the debonair ease that had so charmed Rhoda in young Cartwell.  That little sense of his difference that his Indian nakedness had kept in Rhoda’s subconsciousness disappeared.  She stared at his broad, graceful shoulders, at the fine outline of his head which still was bare, and she knew that her decision was going to be indescribably difficult to keep.  Kut-le watched the wistful gray eyes tenderly, as if he realized the depth of anguish behind their wistfulness; yet he watched none the less resolutely, as if he had no qualms over the outcome of his plans.  And Rhoda, returning his gaze, caught the depth and splendor of his eyes.  And that wordless joy of life whose thrill had touched her the first time that she had met young Cartwell rushed through her veins once more.  He was the youth, the splendor, the vivid wholesomeness of the desert!  He was the heart itself, of the desert.

Kut-le laid his hand on hers.

“Rhoda,” softly, “do you remember the moment before Porter interrupted us?  Ah, dear one, you will have to prove much to erase the truth of that moment from our hearts!  How much longer must I wait for you, Rhoda?”

Rhoda did not speak, but as she returned the young man’s gaze there came her rare slow smile of unspeakable beauty and tenderness.  Kut-le trembled; but before he could speak Rhoda seemed to see between his face and hers, DeWitt, haggard and exhausted, expending the last remnant of his strength in his fight for her.  She put her hands before her face with a little sob.

Kut-le watched her in silence for a moment, then he said in his low rich voice: 

“Neither DeWitt nor I want you to suffer over your decision.  And DeWitt doesn’t want just the shell of you.  I have the real you!  O Rhoda, the real you will belong to me if you are seven times DeWitt’s wife!  Can’t you realize that forever and ever you are mine, no matter how you fight or what you do?”

But Rhoda scarcely heard him.  She was with DeWitt, struggling across the parching sands.

“O Kut-le!  Kut-le!  What shall I do!  What shall I do!”

Kut-le started to answer, then changed his mind.

“You poor, tired little girl,” he said.  “You have had a fierce time there in the desert.  You look exhausted.  What did you have to eat and how did you make out crossing to the mesa?  By your trail you went miles out of your way.”